> 1. URBAN OR RURAL ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE? > It is crucial to Brenner's (and Wood's) thesis to locate the transition > from feudalism to capitalism in the countryside. While it is necessary to > focus on the enclosure acts, etc., what seems puzzling to me is his > de-emphasis of embryonic forms of the capitalist factory per se, which were > found primarily in the towns and cities of the late middle ages. My > interpretation of what took place in the transition from feudalism to > capitalism is that artisans gradually were drawn to facilities where the > tools and raw materials were provided by entrepreneurs, many of whom were > artisans themselves at the outset, but whose growing wealth allowed them to > become proto-capitalists. In a nutshell, they would eventually become the > bourgeoisie, a French word for burgher or "townsman". In such locales, > woolen goods--for example--were produced for the local and international > marketplace. This is a missing element in Brenner, who assumes that, because merchant capital had long been in existence, one can ignore it as the factor which made the difference which led to capitalism. So, he ignores the putting out system, to concentrate only on agrarian relations. But it was not, according to B, tenant farmers who introduced capitalist relations in the countryside. It was the landowners themselves who, in order to deal with the persistent crisis of declining feudal incomes, decided to eliminate customary and copyhold tenements for new leases, leases which eventually led to the rise of capitalism. Alan Carling's synthesis of Cohen and Brenner, which Wood completely rejects as an imposible mix (not everything mixes, try putting car oil in your soup) can be found in his book, Analytical Marxism.
